Celebrant (44 page)

In the weird light, deKlend watches Goose Goes Back lift from a granite tray two heavy, thick-lipped iron funnels, of which there are many more.
He presses these like plungers down onto one of the bodies and turns to pick up two others
—
as he does so, a thin, reedy whistle, almost instantly joined by another, begins to sound.
They are icy notes, gathering strength
—
the weights press down on the bodies causing them to emit corpse gas, channeled through the funnel to the rothorn in plumes, the coppery aroma of old excrement and rotted blood.
Goose Goes Back sets out more of the weights on the bodies until the air swims with a stinging, vomitty-cabbagey perfume, while he moves proudly among the corpses.
deKlend’s reeling senses conjure at random the image of a cheese-maker going up and down aisles of mephitically aromatic fermentations, complacently patting his pale cheeses.
All together, the whistling begins to fashion an unsettling, fluctuating chord that steadily gains in volume.

Come here.

Goose Goes Back waves him over to a body that seems set specially aside, and he comes, intensely curious and full of misgivings.
His senses are so inflamed he feels as though he’s been dipped in alcohol or mint, his skin, nostrils, eyes, and ears.

This corpse is of no appreciable gender, with great volumes of thick grey hair.
Fungus billows from the open cranium, like a crown of tawny, vermilion, and dark green tubular flames, some of which curl down to form transparent bulbs the size of oranges, in which are growing velvetty, ear-shaped, truffle-like gills.
The cheeks seem cut back or torn in triangles away from the lipless teeth that give a look of anguish to the skull face.
The body is a scabby mass, the skin is broken into countless flakes, like a forest floor in autumn.

Goose Goes Back takes from a shelf in the wall above a pearly, conch-like hearing trumpet.
He inserts the trumpet precisely into the dead ear, which deKlend now sees is vastly extended with hard waxy growths that make it look like a gold-orange nest.

Listen (Goose Goes Back says)

deKlend stoops, warily bringing his ear next to the trumpet Goose Goes Back is holding for him.
A rustling noise comes from within the corpse’s head, like the rush of air sliding over a prairie.
Somehow the drone whistling around him actually accentuates the sound
—
the sound in fact slots into that chord exactly.
He is hovering in an icicle above a shadow landscape of soft, felty hills and crooked and recrooked black trees, high, barren mountains and black mist like frozen sea spray
—
from somewhere far away, a lone woman’s voice rises in melancholy song
—

He feels his heart stop, his body goes ice cold, and he yanks his head away into the full resonation of that droning chord.
Turning he only comes face to face with the mummy, fingers around its jaws as though it were giggling madly to itself.

deKlend staggers, retreating from Goose Goes Back.

The whistling subsides.
The music of the flutes stops and they huff and pop like old gramophone records as the gas is followed by liquid corruption, bubbling in crisp leathery foam from the mouths of the horns.

deKlend flees, groping toward daylight.
He stops when he feels relatively fresh air on his face, even if it is blowing off a salt flat.
Around him, in the open now, are trestles with wind-blown carcasses laid out, and heaps of dead animals waiting to be inserted into exhibitions.
Gravity thrashes in front of his eyes and for a moment it’s as if he were seeing animated water.

Goose Goes Back, moving with the measured step that he seems unable to vary, appears.
A complex knot of gravity is gathered inside him, centered in the barrel.
The knot looks like a paralyzed waterspout.

It’s good (he says) to hear Bardo music at least once, although it is also unwise to become too accustomed to it.

He seems to take in the surroundings with appreciation, as if an invisible head on his shoulders swivelled and took a deep breath.

How lovely it is!
(he says)

There’s music even there?
(deKlend asks, with shock in his face)

...
Yes.
Space, time, and music.

deKlend is not looking at Goose Goes Back.
His eye happens to have fallen on a lean, warped little volume tucked between two desiccated gophers.
Night Anthems of a Ghoul
.
It might be the same copy he’d seen at the Madrasa.

Where did this come from? (he thinks out loud, taking up the book)

The author left it here.

The author?
Adr
—
(he breaks off to check the title page)
—
Adrian Slunj?

I have no memory for names, deKlend.

By The Author Of (it says)
The Book of Frenzie
and
Acts of the Dead Bodies: a Thanatodiatheke
.

The list seems to be lengthening as he looks at it.

Author Of The Terrifying Bestseller
TRANSMOG
(it says)

Author Of
The
Visit of the Armless Writhing Marble Torso
, which is evidently
a play
.

Have you read this?
(deKlend asks lamely)

I can’t read.

deKlend flips pages for a moment.

What?
(he asks abruptly)
No?

This prompts him to face Goose Goes Back.

I am unable to scan the lines.
I see all the words at once but am unable to separate them into distinct moments.
Instead, I must listen.

From out of the air comes an exalted, disembodied voice, tremulous with the echo of some empty theatre, reciting:

with thee fade away into the forest dim
...
fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
...

How I love those lines (Goose Goes Back says)

The voice repeats:
with thee fade away into the forest dim
...
fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
...
with thee fade away into the forest dim
...
fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
...

How is it he came through here?
(deKlend wonders aloud)
Did they fire him?

He worships the Bird of Ill Omen (Goose Goes Back says) and he came following his god.

The Bird of Ill Omen is a god?

It is for him.
The Bird of Ill Omen could perhaps be following him.

Where did he go?

I believe he was going to follow him.

Yes, and where?

The Bird of Ill Omen is impossible to follow.
He is only encountered in his past.
Your present is his past, and his present is your future.
He can be seen only as he will be, as the sign of something that is already returning to haunt you.

But then he is like you, isn’t he?

Yes.

How would he appear to you, in that case?
Have you seen him?

I have not recognized him.

deKlend pulls on the belts he uses to keep his shawls about him, ordering his thoughts with an intense effort.

Can’t he always be recognized?
I thought he always looks the same, or, one of the two ways he looks, bird or man.

No.
Your friend asked the same question.

Adrian?

Yes.

I haven’t the privilege of calling him my friend
—
but, you are saying he is incarnated in the way you are?

He is incarnated.
Not in the way I am.

So, in
this
present (deKlend points at the ground) what is he?

I don’t know.

Then where?
—
Votu?

You are going there?
(Goose Goes Back asks)

Yes!

deKlend exhales his sword blade and holds it up.

May I?
(Goose Goes Back asks, lifting his hands, making a groove in the air for it between his fingers and thumbs)

deKlend presents it.
Goose Goes Back rubs it in his fingers, moving his hands over it like a blind man.

It needs work (deKlend says) It isn’t finished.

No (Goose Goes Back says, returning it to him)

I don’t want to present it at Votu until it’s perfect.

I understand.
But there is no merit save in chance.
There is no perfection but in chance.

(That sounded like a quotation.)

The Bird is ‘in Votu,’ you think?

I suppose.

Can you show me which way it is?

Just there.

Goose Goes Back gestures simply in the direction of the house.

I will find what I need there?
They sent me over here.

Votu is just there (Goose Goes Back says simply)

He’s speaking symbolically (deKlend thinks)
I must do my best to understand.

It is
there
(deKlend says, lifting his hand slightly out from his side and pointing)

Yes.

Just there.
Only there?

Only in that direction.

Away from you?

At the moment.

Away from you now?

Yes.

Consequently not here
—

I don’t understand.

—
not, not present here and now.
Votu.

No.
Votu is over there.

So I ‘go over?’

Over there.

He would not be so patient with me (deKlend thinks) if he did not mean something by this.

I must ‘go over’ that place?

I don’t understand.
If you wish to go to Votu, you need simply go that way.

So it’s in the way I go?

Not in the manner, but in the direction.
That direction.

Straight ahead?